Lets Talk About Soil

Soils are fundamental pillars of sustainable development. They are essential for food security, support human well-being, and provide further ecosystem services, such as carbon storage.

They are not only essential but also severely threatened, suffering a continuous decline in quality and being taken over by urban sprawl.

Even though soils are managed and owned locally, their degradation is a key global issue, as their functions transcend national boundaries.

Therefore, we urgently need to upscale actions towards sustainable soil management.

The First Global Soil Week will provide a platform to initiate follow-up actions on land and soil-related decisions made at the Rio+20 Sustainable Development Conference and will take place within the framework of the FAO’s Global Soil Partnership.

The First Global Soil Week offers a forum of interactive exchange and dialogue.

Stakeholders from science, government, business and civil society will come together to share their land and soil-related experience and expertise, and to develop future plans of action for sustainable land/soil management and governance.

The animated film LET’S TALK ABOUT SOIL emphasizes human dependence on soils and describes how sustainable development is threatened by certain soil use trends; the film offers options to make the way we manage our soils more sustainable.

LET’S TALK ABOUT SOIL was produced by designer and animator Uli Henrik Streckenbach for the Global Soil Week and the Global Soil Partnership with the support of the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS) – Global Soil Forum, the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the Deutsche Welle.

Re-blogged from Functional Ecosystems.

The Story of Soil

Soil is an amazing substance. It is a complex mix of ingredients: minerals, air, water, and organic matter—the countless micro-organisms and the decaying remains of once living things. Soil is made of life and soil makes life.

To the farmer, soil is where crops grow.

To the engineer, soil is a foundation to build.

To the ecologist, soil supports and connects ecosystems.

To the archaeologist, soil holds clues to past cultures.

To craftspeople, like potters, soil provides clay to make things.

To the soil scientist, soil is all of these things. 

Water

Food, feed and fodder quality

Human and livestock health

Soil has been called "the skin of the earth" because it is the thin outermost layer of the Earth's crust.

Like our own skin, we can't live without soil. It's easy to take soil for granted, yet it's one of the most important resources we have. That's why we want to spread the word about The Story of Soil - and you can help! 

Courtesy of Soil Science Society of America in their 75th Anniversary 

Soil is the Core of Civilization!

Only 10-12% of the earth’s surface is available to use. We need to maintain the soils natural capacity to renewal. It took the earth thousands of years to create this lovely soil that gives us life! It takes a long time for rock to become soil. We can’t grow produce out of rocks! We can’t grow produce out of dead soil! The soil we see and use every day is soooo alive it’s unbelievable what communities’ microorganisms share all around us. It’s a complicated network of organic communities. The things we can do to maintain these organic networks to maintain fertile soil and future generations of life are so simple. Yes, it sounds contradicting, how can such a complicated network of life only need minimal attention? Nature on its own is already self-sustaining, and knows what works to maintain the circle of life (thanks Lion King). As humans we are a part of this circle of life and we can either be parasites or in harmony with the natural process taking place. And it starts at the most basic levels like recognizing the importance of dirt, and building a relationship nature!

Soil is awesome! Love it! Appreciate it! Plant lots of seeds and trees! Conserve the soil, let’s avoid desertification across the globe, and minimize global warming affects… Please?

Source: Reblogged from AWAKEN OASIS

African agriculture: Dirt poor

Sub-Sarahan Africa is one of the poorest regions on Earth, in both living standards and soil fertility. The depleted soil has caused average yields of grain crops to stagnate at around 1 tonne per hectare since the 1960s. By contrast, yields now reach 2.5 t ha⁻¹ in south Asia and 4.5 t ha⁻¹ in east Asia, where chemical fertilizers have been widely adopted since the green revolution (see 'Uneven landscape'). Fertilizer use across Africa has remained at around 9 kg ha⁻¹ of cultivated land over the past 40 years, whereas Asia uses 96 kg ha⁻¹ of inorganic fertilizer.

The key to tackling hunger in Africa is enriching its soil. The big debate is about how to do it.

Read more.......

Source: Nature 483, 525–527 (29 March 2012) doi:10.1038/483525a

by Natasha Gilbert

Rethinking Connection Between Soil as a Carbon Reservoir and Global Warming

Soils store three times as much carbon as plants and the atmosphere. Soil organic matter such as humus plays a key role in the global carbon cycle as it stores huge amounts of carbon and thus counters global warming. Consequently, the Kyoto Protocol permits the signatory countries to count soils and forests against greenhouse gas emissions as so-called carbon sinks. Exactly why some soil organic matter remains stable for thousands of years while other soil organic matter degrades quickly and releases carbon, however, is largely unknown. The explanatory models used thus far assume that the degradation rate depends on the molecular structures of the soil organic matter.

An international team of 14 researchers headed by Michael Schmidt, a professor of soil science and biogeography at the University of Zurich, has now revealed that numerous other factors affect the degradation rate of soil organic matter in an article published inNature.

Soil environment determines degradation rate of humus

"The degradation speed isn't determined by the molecular structure of the dead plant debris, but by the soil environment in which the degradation takes place," says Schmidt, summing up the new results. For instance, the physical isolation of the molecules, whether the molecules in the soil are protected by mineral or physical structures and soil moisture influence the degradation rate of soil organic matter. Furthermore, the researchers are able to show that, contrary to the scientific consensus, there is no humic matter in the soil and this should therefore not be used for models.

New experiments and models needed

As Professor Schmidt explains, the findings need to be used for new experiments and models. In doing so, it is not only the first few centimeters of the soil that should be examined, as has been the case up to now, but rather the full top two to three meters. In their article, the researchers make various suggestions as to how the models for forecasting the response of soils to changes in the climate, vegetation and land use might be improved.

Moreover, the new results cast a critical light on bioengineering experiments with plants containing high amounts of lignin or plant charcoal (biochar), with which more carbon is supposed to be stored in the soil in the long run.

Source: Science Daily (Oct. 5, 2011)

Journal Reference:

Michael W. I. Schmidt, Margaret S. Torn, Samuel Abiven, Thorsten Dittmar, Georg Guggenberger, Ivan A. Janssens, Markus Kleber, Ingrid Kögel-Knabner, Johannes Lehmann, David A. C. Manning, Paolo Nannipieri, Daniel P. Rasse, Steve Weiner, Susan E. Trumbore. Persistence of soil organic matter as an ecosystem property. Nature, 2011; 478 (7367): 49 DOI: 10.1038/nature10386